• Apply To Contribute To London TechWatch
  • Tell Us About Your Startup
  • Email Signup
  • Advertise on London TechWatch
London TechWatch
  • Business
  • Startups
  • Funding
  • Women in Tech
  • London Tech
No Result
View All Result
  • Business
  • Startups
  • Funding
  • Women in Tech
  • London Tech
No Result
View All Result
London TechWatch
No Result
View All Result
Home Resources Advice

What are the Most Important Skills a New Founder Needs?

AlleyWatch by AlleyWatch
What are the Most Important Skills a New Founder Needs?
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

Most Founders have a “certain set of skills” that apply to one aspect of their startup, whether it’s deep product knowledge or incredible domain expertise from their previous job.

Unfortunately, in a startup, we sorta need to be a jack of all trades because we’re often the only person doing all the work!

Let’s assume that you could only invest the bare minimum in the various aspects of your startup operations.

Here’s the least you’d need to know.

What about finance? Do I need to know the numbers?

At the very least a Founder should understand how an income statement works.

That simply means “here’s where we’re making money, here’s where we’re spending it, and here’s how much we’re making (or losing).” If you didn’t understand a balance sheet, or complicated projections, or anything else, you’d at least have to understand where the money came in, and where it went out.

Side note — I meet very few Founders who know any of this.

Should I be great at marketing?

Even if you don’t know anything about marketing, you’d absolutely have to understand the fundamentals of how marketing performs.

That means knowing how much it costs to acquire a customer, how well your new prospects are converting to paid prospects, and what your total revenue earned per customer is (so you know you’re acquiring customers profitably).

If you know those numbers, the rest is a matter of testing channels to deliver those results.

Do I need to learn to code or design?

While lots of great companies are built by genius coders and designers, you don’t necessarily need to know their trade first hand to know how to leverage these skills.

A good Founder knows what code and design can do (to affect the product) even if they don’t know how to do it themselves. The key here is to understand the fundamentals of code and design so they can be properly applied.

And yes, those fundamentals are crazy important these days.

What about “management?”

Once you get into more overarching skill sets, it’s hard to be an “expert” per se.

While it helps to have experience, many young managers figure out “management” through on the job training, mostly out of necessity, but also because most companies only have a handful of employees to manage in the formative years.


Reprinted by permission.

Previous Post

7 Myths And Reality On Employees Thinking Like Owners

Next Post

Facebook is Dying, Libra Won’t Save It, and Wall Street is Clueless

Next Post
Facebook is Dying, Libra Won’t Save It, and Wall Street is Clueless

Facebook is Dying, Libra Won’t Save It, and Wall Street is Clueless

ABOUT LONDON TECHWATCH

ABOUT US
ADVERTISE
EDITORIAL GUIDELINES
LEGAL
PRIVACY
TERMS OF USE

CONTACT

ADVERTISE
TIPS
WRITE FOR US

CHANNELS

LONDON VC
LONDON TECH NEWS
LONDON STARTUPS
LONDON TECH DIRECTORY

© 2023 London TechWatch | All Rights Reserved | Proudly Made for London

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Funding
  • London Tech

© 2023 London TechWatch | All Rights Reserved | Proudly Made for London

You are seconds away from signing up for the hottest list in London Tech!

Join the millions and keep up with the stories shaping entrepreneurship. Sign up today.

Close this popup